San Juan River Guide

page thirty six THE Waiting List River Book Reviews SAN JUAN RIVER GUIDE SAND ISLAND TO CLAY HILLS CROSSING f you boat the San Juan River in Southeastern Utah, you might want to pick up a copy of this Inew guidebook for your next trip, even if you already have one or more of the other guidebooks for the San Juan. I have a whole shelf full of guidebooks for various rivers, some of them pretty old and others fairly recent. Over the years, the quality and diversity of information in river guide books has generally improved. Now Lisa has captured the best ideas of the bunch, and incorporated them all into this fine guidebook which, overall, sets the bar a bit higher for anyone who want to write a great guidebook for a popular river. Anyone who has a few is towards the top of the page, an weathered and worn guidebooks arrangement that seems both natural won’t find any features they and (now that I’ve seen it) obvious. haven’t seen somewhere before. In addition to mileages, rapids, and But I can’t think of any other river topographic contours, features men- guide that shows as much atten- tioned in the text are keyed with ref- tion to detail; this is a beautiful, erences to the page numbers where as well as informative, book. you can read about them. There are six major sec- Another interesting feature is tions, as follows: San Juan River the amount of current and timely Overview...including river charac- information that goes beyond what teristics, weather, and threats to you would normally expect to find the S.J. Logistics and in a river guidebook. There are con- Safety...including access points, cise, but clear, sections on such top- permits, river safety, and river eti- ics as permits, the Animas-La Plata quette, Human History...prehis- Project, silt accumulation on the toric and historic Indian cultures, lower end, river safety and etiquette, Mormons, miners, river runners and the preservation of archaeologi- Geology...well illustrated sections cal resources. on the River, the Landscape, and It’s spiral bound, printed on the rocks, written by guide and waterproof paper, and sized to fit geologist Wayne Ranney: inform- into your ammo-box. ative, but written for the non-sci- If you forget to get a copy entist Biology...including biologi- before heading off to the river, you cal changes, and a brief but excel- might be able to find one at lent guide to plants and animals Recapture Lodge in Bluff; but I’d recommend getting and a River Map. one now, so you have time to read through it before you There’s a few things about Lisa’s book that make it real- get to the boat-ramp. You’ll be glad you have a copy on ly special: first of all, the quality of the illustrations. From the your next trip down the Juan. spectacular color photo on the cover (Chris Brown), to the reviewed by Drifter Smith exceptionally clear river map at the end, this is a book with looks to match the scenery. There’s also some fine historic photos, aerial photography by Michael Collier, and a pair of match- by Lisa Kearsley ing photos taken 70 years apart, showing vegetation changes at Waterproof Edition, 2002 ($17.95 + $2 shipping from the mouth of Chinle Creek, courtesy of Bob Webb. The draw- Shiva Press) Published by Shiva Press ings illustrating pottery types, rock art styles, plants, animals, 5557 White Horse Drive and geology are simple, clear, and informative. And the river Flagstaff, AZ 86004 map starts at the end of the book, so the downstream direction www.shivapress.com Winter 2002 / 2003 page thirty seven Hell or High Water: James White’s Disputed Passage Through Grand Canyon 1867 by Eilean Adams, 2001, Logan Utah, Utah State University Press— reviewed by Drifter Smith hile you’d have to look far and wide to find an American who’s never heard of John Wesley WPowell, the name of James White is not likely to be recognized except perhaps by a relatively small number of river runners with an interest in the history of, and controversies about, the exploration of the Colorado River. However, in 1868 - the year before Powell launched his first river expedition at Green River Wyoming - the situation regarding their relative name recognition was reversed. Powell was an unknown college professor from Illinois, a disabled vet- eran of the Civil War with a compulsion to explore the still little known territory of the inter-mountain west in the company of occasional students and various mountain men he hired as guides to show him the sights. In contrast, James White was a bit of a celebrity, perhaps even a folk hero, the Most subsequent Adams’ account begins with a sixth topic of numerous conversations, and river runners grade history test question more than 60 the subject of newspaper articles, and agreed with Powell: years ago: “Who was the first white man to scientific reports. Attacked by Indians go through the Grand Canyon?” Her answer, while prospecting, he fled deeper into White’s alleged trip “James White,” rather than the expected unknown canyon country until he was impossible, “John Wesley Powell,” was marked incorrect. encountered a large river. Hastily con- so he was either Her teacher was not amused when she insist- structing a primitive raft from a couple ed that White - her grandfather - had been logs, he and a companion escaped down confused, through the Grand Canyon in 1867, two the river. A few days later, his compan- a liar, or both. years before Powell. ion drowned. On September 7, 1867, Eilean Adams never met her grandfather, White was pulled out of the Colorado River at Callville, and for years what she knew about him (and the controversy Nevada, which now lies under Lake Mead a few miles east of surrounding his adventure) was based on family stories and a Las Vegas. Entirely by accident, he had apparently floated copy of a slim volume by Thomas Dawson that had been from somewhere north of the San Juan River through the published by the United States Senate back in 1917. In 1959, Grand Canyon, and washed out the lower end, still (barely) however, river historian Dock Marston wrote to her mother alive enough to tell the tale. as part of his research into the James White story, which Over the course of the next century and a third, sparked her interest in finding out more, maybe even writing Powell’s reputation has waxed while White’s has waned. something about it eventually. As it turned out, Marston was Before Powell’s expedition, White’s story was widely publi- mainly interested in finding evidence to discredit White and cized and generally believed. But in August of 1869, viewing his tale. Hance Rapid at low water, Powell and his men no longer A decade later, she was contacted by Bob Euler, who thought there was any truth to White’s tale. Powell publicly was also interested in the story. Euler - unlike Marston and denounced White’s trip as a fiction within a few days of most earlier commentators - was curious enough to wonder getting off the river, believing that he (and no one else) what sense could be made of White’s story. Could White have deserved the credit for conquering the Colorado. Most sub- really have done what he said he did? sequent river runners agreed with Powell: White’s alleged Euler gathered the details of White’s account - mostly trip was impossible, so he was either confused, a liar, or written down by others, as White was essentially illiterate - both. In any event, there’s no way he could have survived a and tried to match them with the landscape, in the hope that trip down the Colorado, without supplies, on a raft made he could make sense of the handful of information that out of a couple cottonwood logs. White remembered from an adventure he barely survived, In Hell or High Water Eilean Adams tells several now a hundred years in the past. Eventually he came up with interwoven stories that revolve around the strange story of a theory about where White started down the river that seems James White, his moment of fame, and eventual descent to fit; but then Euler lost interest in the project. into relative obscurity. While I doubt Hell or High Water will In the end, Adams realized that if anyone was going be the last word on White and his adventure, it will be to hear about her grandfather and his adventure, she’d have to essential reading on the subject for years to come. tell the story herself. And it’s a good thing she did, as one of page thirty eight THE Waiting List the most interesting threads in this narrative has to do with he couldn’t even stand up. In A River Running West Donald how her grandfather was treated by earlier investigators - Wooster sums it up nicely: “If (White’s trip) seems improba- Stanton, in particular - who had their own agenda of estab- ble, all other explanations are more improbable still.” lishing that White could not have been the first through the So what, one might ask. Who cares? After all, it was Grand Canyon. Nobody else could have told that part of the Powell who first ran the river intentionally, and made scien- story. tific observations; later he went on to map the surrounding Intermixed with the personal story of the quest to canyon country, started the Bureau of Ethnology, and for find out about her grandfather and his encounter with histo- years was Director of the Geologic Survey.

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